With all of the primary election fever going on in the States, it’s inevitable that people throw their allegiance to one candidate or another. Or, in the case of KFC, just letting everyone know who they don’t support. I’m in for a Hillary special…I wonder how much it has increased business?

As an obvious appeal to young voters, the latest entrants into the YouTube/online video sphere are the 2008 presidential candidates. YouTube has created a landing page dedicated to the presidential candidates and 8 of the candidates have also set up pages on YouTube. Leading the way is Senator Hillary Clinton. She has put a call out to America to choose her campaign song. Hillary’s list of potential campaign songs includes:

• City of Blinding Lights – U2
• Suddenly I See – KT Tunstall
• I’m a Believer – Smash Mouth
• Get Ready – The Temptations
• Ready to Run – Dixie Chicks
• Rock This Country! – Shania Twain
• Beautiful Day – U2
• Right Here, Right Now – Jesus Jones
• I’ll Take You There – The Staple Singers
• Write-in Candidates

Most of her nine preselected nominees are familiar campaign boilerplate songs -Beautiful Day and Right Here, Right Now -all totally sterile and devoid of possible controversy. You know that any song that is selected with be put through the ringer looking for any hidden meanings and negative connotations that can be derived from the lyrics. But her non-controversial preselected songs have not stopped people from roasting her attempt at grabbing the youth demographic. Through comments, blogs, and write in suggestions, there have been many less than flattering song selections like ‘The Bitch is Back’ and ‘Cold as Ice’. Our personal suggestions include ‘Stand By Your Man’ and our throwback to the 90’s ‘She’s a Cold Hearted Snake’, yes we went there and we do still love you Paula.

This challenge has received an enormous online response, with more than 125,000 casting a vote for their song choice in under 5 days and more than 1/2 million people have watched the video on YouTube. This move into the online sphere has drawn definite attention to her presidential campaign both positive and negative, but its all about Hillary right now so her online campaign, jabs or not, is succeeding in getting her presidential campaign attention. But she is interacting with a demographic that traditionally has had a poor turn out in past presidential elections – Youth. This campaign is showing the increased importance of the Internet in today’s political campaigns. It won’t be long before we see all major presidential candidates focusing efforts into the online sphere.